Latest Linux Standards Base Gets Vendor Support

Neopallium writes to tell us that in a recent announcement at the Desktop Linux Summit the Free Standards Group reports fourteen of the leading Linux vendors have pledged support for the newest release of the Linux Standards Base. From the article: "'The Release of LSB 3.1 is another milestone achieved by the industry and the Open Source Community that delivers ever increasing value to customers,' said Reza Rooholamini, director of enterprise solutions engineering at Dell. 'It enables further uniformity and standardization across applications and distributions that allows quicker deployment of Linux solutions with higher levels of quality.'"

Dear ScuttleMonkey,

You may remember me, I am old friend. Please don't be a stranger.

Sincerely,

Mr. Comma

From the Article

"LSB is not to be taken internally lest you wear the robes of Richard Stallman."

Interesting Version Number... 3.1

Soooo... 3.1. The first usable version of Windows was 3.1 also. Coincidence?!

Maybe this WILL be the year Linux arrives on the desktop!

Re:Interesting Version Number... 3.1

Nah, it won't be usable until Linux for Workgroups 3.11

Never mind the Linux vendors

I want to know when we'll get LSB support from the application vendors.

No matter what the roadmap [edac.org] from the EDA Consortium says, too freaking many of the tools I use at $WORK refuse to run on anything other than Red Hat 7.2 (I kid you not!)

And, yes, they actually check /etc/redhat-release

Linux vendor support isn't critical.

It's the Linux app ISV's who need to write their apps to this "standard".

So far, that isn't happening.

Is LSB a good thing?

As we watch competition help the Linux landscape considerably, is LSB a good thing? Gnome and KDE push each other to become better, Java and Mono compete for developers and even Rails and J2EE go after the web market.

Here is a standard that specifes how to package APIs and which APIs to use if you want to have a a LSB complient desktop and application. Isn't that a bit restrictive?

Re:Is LSB a good thing?

Here is a standard that specifes how to package APIs and which APIs to use if you want to have a a LSB complient desktop and application. Isn't that a bit restrictive?

It depends on what you call "restrictive"...

Tarzan not like roads.
Roads make Tarzan not move freely.
Road lights threaten Tarzan with big noisy cars.
Tarzan likes tree ropes.
Tarzan prefers jungle.

In jungle, Tarzan goes wherever he wants! AAAAA aaaaAAaAAaa AAA!

All your

Neopallium writes to tell us that in a recent announcement at the Desktop Linux Summit the Free Standards Group reports fourteen of the leading Linux vendors have pledged support for the newest release of the Linux Standards Base.

ALL YOUR LINUX STANDARD BASE ARE....

...oh, nevermind, you knew that one was coming.

Important time saver

This is excellent news. Linux application developers write their applications against a particular distribution. Some add code to detect what distro the installation is for and adjust their paths accordingly. All other distro's have to spend time to write an installer to map that configuration to their distribution's file system layout. This is repeated every time a new release of a package comes out. With 100,000+ packages, that is a lot of work. Take Gentoo's ebuild system. Can you image how much effort it takes to maintain all those ebuilds? Any standardization of the Linux filesystem layout will reduce this effort and saves countless hours. Hours now can be used to improve applications themselves. Good news indeed :)

A good thing for normal users

There's plenty of concern that the LSB platform is restrictive, but I think it's going to be a huge step forward for 'normal' users who don't want to know how to make an application work - we just want to run it. Linux is still an open model and so LSB is not compulsory, and if an application can be built better in an alternative way, great!

I've had plenty of hassle trying to get various packages to work on older Linux systems, spent endless hours trying unsuccessfully to get services for a wireless network running on the previous version of Fedora. I'm hoping LSB will allow a simple download of an executable that just works - the ability to download an exe and just run it seconds later is probably the biggest advantage of Windows v Linux IMHO.

Talk the talk

"delivers ever increasing value to customers - It enables further uniformity and standardization across applications and distributions that allows quicker deployment of Linux solutions with higher levels of quality"

Now we're speaking the language management can understand. All the stuff about "symmetrical multiprocessing" and "system bus throughput" was just a bunch of incomprehensible gobbledygook.

LSB is a Pipe Dream Really

The only way to reliably guarantee binary compatibility (especially with the test suites the LSB use) and compatibility to any important degree is to have the same binaries, and henceforth, the same distribution. It is actually possible to pass the certification for the LSB with one set of hardware and fail it with another.

LSB compatibility is a nice badge to put on your software boxes (management love accreditation logos!), but whether it will mean anything to the ISVs who should be taking notice of it and anything practical for end users is another question.

Has LSB fixed RPM hell yet?

I hope 3.1 addresses my main gripe with RPMs: an RPM built for Fedora won't install into SUSE because of dependency issues, or vice versa.

I'm still reading the latest spec to see if this has been or is going to be addressed. When/if it is, then I'll be very happy, because it will mean finally the end to confusion about using the "right" RPM repositories for your distro: if the distro is LSB compliant, then any RPM repository for that distro should work with other LSB compliant distros, with the dependencies for packages containing Base libraries being met or at least consistant accross the distros.

Until that happy day, the LSB doesn't add a lot of value to me as an end-user. As a developer, it does have some small value, in that it provides me a consistent API, but that's about it...

LSB is lamelamelame.

As long as the standard requires rpm files, its going to be a non-starter for many. The rpm format sucks the big one. I would much rather almost anything else than be stuck in RPM HELL. Give me slackpacks, apt-get, or even tarballs...but please save us from RPM Hell!

ttyl
          Farrell

p.s. I don't like rpm, can you guess?

All Major Vendors?

The LSB has garnered support from all major vendors in the Linux Community including AMD, Asianux, CA, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Mandriva, Novell, RealNetworks, Red Flag, Red Hat, Turbolinux, Xandros and others.

I sure hope Caldera is one of the others!

(SCOre: 5 Ironic)

Mark the Chief Developer?

said Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder and chief developer

Er, it is the first time that I know Mark is the Chief Developer of Ubuntu....

LSB Linux

Considering most if not all of the commercial linux companies specialise in the server market and pay little regard to the Desktop, it would make more sense to have one desktop linux distro and base their products around it. It is a more efficient way of concentrating resources by maintaining just one packaging and linux system to the LSB standard. It would also mean that more resources could be diverted to projects that are both benficial to the commerical and home desktops like KDE, Gnome etc. The only downside is that the financial support for Community distro's would most likely be cut.

Re:"Base"?

Because it has nothing to do with desktops, per se. It is a specification for directory layouts, config files, and required libraries, and its purpose is to make sure that applications that compile on one system that complies with the LSB will compile on all systems that comply with it.

Re:Virus and rootkit writers are happy to hear ...

Maturity is a double-edged sword. We get all the benefits of uniformity along with all its problems. Let's hope that Free Software can adapt good defenses whilst still providing better app support and uniformity.

Re:"Base"?

Why not "Linux Standard Desktop"?

Because it's existed for far longer then the vast majority of people have even considered using linux for a desktop system (Disclaimer: I have been using linux for my primary desktop for around 6 years)

Meh, shouldn't feed the troll and all that, but LSB set standards for things far beyond the desktop.

Re:"Base"?

Why not "Linux Standard Desktop"?

Because in the true spirit of free software, it are belong to all of us.

Re:Ummm

Linux was (and is) supposed to be a Unix-type kernel. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Ummm

> Um, wasn't Linux supposed to break away from standards and uniformity

No--where on earth did you come up with that silly notion? Linux has achieved most of its success through leveraging existing standards (e.g. POSIX, TCP/IP, ISO language standards). The one that tries to "break away" from standards is MS, because standards don't promote customer lock-in. If you follow standards, then customers may be able to look at other vendors that follow the same standards.

Standards in Linux are not mandated (because you have the freedom to do whatever you want with the code, pretty much), but are greatly respected and generally followed when possible/reasonable. Standard-breaking Linux projects (and I admit there are some) are almost always completely outside of the mainstream.

> or is that just breaking away from Microsoft standards?

"Microsoft standards?" Isn't that an oxymoron? :)

What MS mostly has is ad-hoc, undocumented arbitrary code which the rest of the world is just supposed to accept as-is without questioning. The main notice they take of standards is when the see an opportunity to embrace-and-extend to subvert a standard (see ISO C, HTML, Java, Kerberos, etc., etc.)

> Sarcasm if you didn't get it.

Um...does that mean that you're a troll, rather than just a very clueless person? If so, then count me as trolled, but my post is really addressed to those who are clueless enough to think there's some validity at all to what you posted.